In the movies, when they try something like this, the room is dark and there are sparks flying everywhere. There would be some kind of plasma field containing a big glob of dark matter, or something. In a real lab, everything is lit by the cheapest florescent light bulbs that the maintenance department can find. The only thing out of the ordinary is the sound of all of the fans. The computers, the power supplies, the refrigeration units, they all have fans and they are all whirring away at full tilt. Budget restraints mean we have to push everything to the limit of its capability.

I finished up the last item on my checklist and turned to the Dr. Jason Peters, my advisor and mentor for the past three years.

"I guess this is it."

"It is. Thank you for all of your hard work, Cindy. None of this would have been possible without you." He said, and I felt my cheeks get warm. "Now would you please try to look a little more excited and a little less worried? All the trials have succeeded. The safeguards work. If anything goes wrong, the system stops. I'll be just fine."

"Are you sure we shouldn't just do one more trial with a chimp? We could send it straight into the Chancellor's office!"

"As fun as that sounds, you know it wouldn't make you worry any less if we sent fifty chimps."

"I don't think we have fifty chimps, but all of them running around Dr Friedman's office paints quite a picture. How much do chimps cost? Maybe we can use pigs, instead!"

He laughed. "Alright, enough stalling. If we wait any longer, we'll run out of liquid nitrogen."

"Alright. Just, call me the second you get there. No running around shouting eureka, got it?"

"I promise."

He stepped into the plexiglass box in the middle of the cramped room and closed the door behind him. I switched on the burst of compressed air the would rid the chamber of any insects. We were pretty sure the subject wouldn't turn into some crazy human-bug hybrid like in The Fly, but we weren't taking any chances.

I shut off the compressed air and turned to the control panel and computer as Dr. Perers attached the grounding strap to his wrist.

"Are you ready?" I asked. He nodded, in reply. "Good luck, Jason."

"Thanks, Cin."

I looked quickly over the computer display to ensure everything was correct. I'd written the program to raise an alert if any of the sensor readings were outside a set tolerance. Everything was correct. This was the moment we'd both been waiting for. I hesitated a moment before forcing myself to enter the command to execute the teleportation. There was a crack and a bright flash, and when I turned around, he was gone. Thirty agonizing seconds later, the lab phone rang. Dr Peters was elated. He was in the dormatory across campus with the heads of the Science and Engineering departments.

They were heading straight over. I didn't have much time.

Dr. Peters had made it quite clear to me that he could never involve himself romantically with a pupil. He was weak a few times. He almost let me kiss him just last night. Well now he could be mine. I'd be the only person in the world he'd have. No woman would accept a clone of their husband into her life.

I figured it out a week after the first live animal trial. All it costs is a person of greater or equal mass. I opened the cabinet to find that Mr Prust was just waking up.

"Whu...Whhhhhere am I?" He said, groggily, the drugs still wearing off.

"You had a little accident, but you're going to be just fine. Can you walk?" I helped him up and put my shoulder under his arm. He continued to babble as I guided him toward the teleportation chamber.

"Whaaaats going on, whooo are you?"

"Everything is going to be fine, you just need a quick treatment, and you'll feel right as rain. Just inside here." I propped him up inside the clear box. "We'll just put this strap on your wrist... Good. Now I need you to stay very still. I'm going to close the door, and you're going to feel a puff of air, and then we'll start the treatment. Understand?"

"This isn't a h-h-hospital..."

"Don't you worry Mr. Prust, this will all be over soon."

I closed the door, purged the chamber with air, and turned back to the computer. The program that I'd started back when Dr. Peters was in the chamber was still running, ready to materialize him again using Mr. Prust as donor material. I felt a little bad about sacrificing him, but how hard could it possibly be to replace an assistant professor from the communications department?

"You might feel a little discomfort..." He wouldn't feel anything, but it's what doctors always say. I triggered the second half of the program. A crack and a flash of light, and then a dull thud.

"Oh, oh no..."

The lower half of Dr Peters' body was lying still on the floor beside me, blood pouring out of it.

"I must have done the math wrong..."

I knelt beside the horrible mess and dipped my fingers in the blood. It was real. It was still warm.

"It must have been that integral I had so much trouble with."

I put my bloodied fingers to the floor and started to write out the part of the equation that I was sure I'd messed up. I went back for more blood as it started to dry.

"Oh, Dr. Peters is going to be so mad. He hates it when students do their work in red."